Evaluation of two nutritional scores' association with systemic treatment toxicity and survival in metastatic colorectal cancer: an AGEO prospective multicentre study.

Introduction: The Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) is currently the standard nutritional assessment tool for patients with cancer. In a retrospective assessment of a prospective cohort, we showed that the Nutritional Risk Index (NRI) seemed to be associated with treatment toxicity and survival in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

Objective: The objective of this study was to compare these two nutritional tools (PG-SGA and NRI) on their correlation with chemotherapy-related toxicity and survival in non-pre-treated patients with mCRC.

Methods: This prospective multicentre observational study enrolled non-pre-treated patients with mCRC. PG-SGA and NRI were performed at the onset of first-line chemotherapy. Treatment-related toxicities were registered according to National Cancer Institute Common Toxicity Criteria Adverse Event version 4.0. Progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were calculated from the start of treatment.

Results: A total of 168 patients were included from eight French centres. Patients were considered malnourished in 41% of cases according to PG-SGA and 56% of cases according to the NRI. In multivariate analysis, malnutrition according to PG-SGA was significantly associated with chemotherapy-related grade ≥2 clinical toxicities (odds ratio: 3.7; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.7-8.4; p = 0.001) and OS (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.6; 95% CI: 1.3-5.3; p = 0.006), but not with PFS (HR: 1.5; 95% CI: 0.8-2.6; p = 0.2). Conversely, malnutrition according to the NRI was not significantly associated with these tolerance and efficacy parameters.

Conclusion: Although more complex to perform in daily oncology practice, the PG-SGA score appears to be the best nutritional assessment tool because of its strong association with clinically relevant oncological outcomes such as OS and treatment-related toxicities in patients with mCRC.